Between the two scandalous gurus, Desai has at least admitted his mistakes—after getting kicked out of this own ashram. Swami Satchidananda, on the other hand, took his contriteness to the grave.

Desai solders on with 15 or so close followers after losing his ashram and $155,000 salary; and Satchidananda's legacy lives on, sans the acknowledgement and apology some of his abuse victims still seek.

The moral of this story: if you refuse to fess up, you just might get away with it. Alternate moral: don't teach celibacy if you can't keep it in your pants yourself.

5 Comments:

At 4/21/2005 10:49 PM,
His Holiness, Shri Shri Bobaji, 16th Degree Avatari, And The One In Whom The Sun Never Sets said...

When it comes to celibacy and their own carnal dalliances, legions of gurus have gone down the do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do path.

I might be mistaken, but I think Desai only outed himself after being pressured to come clean.

I was once told that according to the Vedas, "sin would avoid an enlightened being like deer avoid a burning mountaintop."

Given all the allegedly enlightened gurus, some with seals of approval from other allegedly enlightened gurus, either these liberated gurus were no freer from temptation than lesser beings, or they weren't enlightened.

Then, again, maybe one can play the 'Crazy Wisdom' card and dismiss the 'tantric' exercises as a boon for the good of the voluptuous female devotees, Cough!

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Since Satchidananda Swami is no longer here to defend himself, I would like to make an observation on his behalf. I had the privilege to meet Satchidananda Swami and to study his teachings of infinite peace and love. My impression and experience was that he was the real deal. I had very profound experiences with his teachings and meditations. His teachings of celibacy were not anything like the understanding of celibacy as understood by most orthodox religions as we may know them. Swami Satchidananda's teachings are very flexible and forgiving. If anyone wanted to be celibate that was fine if nobody wanted to celibate that was also fine. The best part about his teachings of Integral Yoga was that you could just relax because everything is just the way it should be no matter what it was.

As for all the mud slinging still going on years after his passing away, I would like to reiterate the entire story for people who may not know exactly what took place. One of the Swami's disciples was giving him a massage and the Swami fell asleep. While he was sleeping his disciple decided to perform oral sex on him. She then out her own psychosis became resentful that the Swami did not submit to her delusional intentions. The exact details of how she became so spiteful were not very clear but she made up a story about feeling violated because she saw the Swami as an authority figure. More than likely she had ulterior motives for giving the Swami her special massage and when the Swami did not submit to her black mail she needed to get revenge.

I am very understanding of the Swami's position because I have experienced the wrathful vengeance of many psychotic women who in their own delusional psychosis imagine something that does not exist. I have also been so relaxed during a massage that I feel asleep and have even been unaware of an erection that the therapist decided to give special therapy to while I slept. Granted I did wake up but I am not as easily prone to meditative trances as Swami Satchidananda was. I personally have more respect for the Swami knowing that at the ripe old age of 80 he could attract a young woman in her twenties. She was probably more interested in his money but I guess a gold-digger is better than no digger;-)

People who criticize a simple natural response like this have very unrealistic expectations of any human being. These types of people will probably criticize Jesus Christ for having an intimate relationship with Mary Magdalene or even Mother Mary for not being a virgin. I think the actions of Swami Satchidananda and Jesus Christ go far beyond any intimate relations that they may or may not have had. Their teachings have made significant impacts on humanity and will continue help human beings to evolve toward the infinite truth of peace and love. Sexual encounters are so insignificant in comparison to the propagation of the infinite truth.

Swami Satchidananda taught that everyone is an expression of the Male and Female energies of the universe or Shiva and Shakti. He did not teach sexual repression; he only taught how to become more aware of the infinite source in what ever we may do. There are always two sides to every story. I would request that anyone who decides to criticize anyone else try to be objective and get both sides of the story before making a judgment.

.... An appropriate name for your blog could have been Neti Neti.— Rama

While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they
are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim
is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively
self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that
no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus
poop on the same pot we do.